The Nevers: A Half-Finished Victorian Fantasy, Reviewed
HBO ordered The Nevers straight to series in June 2018, after a bidding war that included Netflix. The show that finally aired, created by Joss Whedon, ran six episodes from April 11 to May 16, 2021. It was meant to run twelve.
The back half never made it to HBO. In December 2022, the series was canceled and pulled from the HBO Max library on December 18, 2022. All twelve episodes began streaming on Tubi on February 13, 2023.
That is the shape of the thing: a Victorian sci-fi drama about people with strange powers, cut off at the halfway mark, then quietly restored somewhere else. The first six episodes are what we can judge. They score 5.7 out of 10.
Trailer, via Sky TV.
Amalia True and the Touched of Victorian London
The Nevers is set in the last years of Queen Victoria’s reign. London is crowded with the Touched — people, mostly women, who suddenly manifest abnormal abilities. Some of the powers are charming. Some are very disturbing.
Among them are Amalia True, a mysterious, quick-fisted widow, and Penance Adair, a brilliant young inventor. The two are champions of this new underclass. They make a home for the Touched while fighting the forces arrayed against them — which, in this show, is close to all the forces there are.
The premise, as HBO described it, is “an epic science fiction drama about a gang of Victorian[s] who find themselves with unusual abilities (due to alien intervention), relentless enemies, and a mission that might change the world.”
Laura Donnelly, Ann Skelly, and the Cast Whedon Built
Laura Donnelly was the first actor cast, in April 2019, in the starring role of Amalia True. Whedon’s statement about her was unusually warm: “Laura Donnelly has charisma, wisdom and an anarchic precision that not only captures Amalia but defines her. She’s fierce and she’s funny – and I need both for the journey ahead.”
He was right about the casting. Donnelly is the reason the show holds together as long as it does. Amalia is a widow with a hard fist and a harder past, and Donnelly plays her without asking for sympathy she hasn’t earned.
Ann Skelly’s Penance Adair is the counterweight — the inventor, the believer, the one who still thinks the Touched can build something instead of just surviving. Skelly and Donnelly have the easy, needling rapport the show leans on whenever the plot stalls.
Twelve actors joined in July 2019. Olivia Williams took the part of Lavinia Bidlow, with James Norton as Hugo Swann and Tom Riley as Augustus “Augie” Bidlow. Pip Torrens played Lord Massen. Denis O’Hare came aboard as Dr. Edmund Hague, and Rochelle Neil as Annie Carbey. Amy Manson was cast as Maladie, Zackary Momoh as Doctor Horatio Cousens, Eleanor Tomlinson as Mary Brighton, Nick Frost as Declan Orrun, and Ben Chaplin as Inspector Frank Mundi.
A month later came Elizabeth Berrington, Viola Prettejohn, Anna Devlin, Kiran Sonia Sawar, and Ella Smith as Lucy Best, Myrtle Haplisch, Primrose Chattaway, Harriet Kaur, and Desirée Blodgett. Martyn Ford was cast in August as the recurring Nicolas Perbal, also known as Odium.
That is a lot of names for six episodes. It shows.
The Effie Boyle Trick and the Maladie Reveal
The fifth episode introduces Effie Boyle. Effie turns out to be one of Maladie’s victims — and the Effie seen in the episode is Maladie herself in disguise.
To sell the illusion, Amy Manson wore makeup and a fat suit, with the look altered in postproduction using computer-generated imagery. The production also added a fake name, “Margaret Tuttle,” to IMDb as the actress playing Effie, hoping to fool viewers before the episode aired.
That is a real trick, and it is the kind of trick The Nevers is good at. It is also a trick that only works once.
Writers From Buffy, and a Production Built for Twelve
The executive producers are Joss Whedon, Philippa Goslett, Doug Petrie, Jane Espenson, Ilene S. Landress, and Bernadette Caulfield. Espenson and Petrie, who worked with Whedon on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, served as writers. Laurie Penny was also part of the writing staff. Gemma Jackson served as production designer.
HBO produced the series with Mutant Enemy Productions.
The show was built for a longer run than it got. Six episodes establish a world, a cast of more than a dozen, a villain, and a conspiracy — and then stop.
What the First Six Episodes Actually Deliver
Here is the honest accounting. The Nevers has a strong lead, a strong second lead, a genuinely strange premise, and a production that looks like money was spent on it. It also has too many people to serve and a mythology it keeps deferring.
The Touched are the show’s sharpest idea. A class of people, mostly women, suddenly given abilities in the last years of Victoria’s reign is a premise with teeth — it is about power, who gets it, and who decides it is a disease.
What it does not do is resolve. The forces against the Touched are stacked high. Six episodes in, the show is still introducing.
| Element | What the source gives us | What six episodes deliver |
|---|---|---|
| Created by | Joss Whedon | Credited creator; executive producer |
| Network | HBO | Aired six episodes, April–May 2021 |
| Order | Straight-to-series, June 2018, after a bidding war including Netflix | Twelve episodes ordered, split in two parts |
| Lead cast | Laura Donnelly as Amalia True | Starring role, first actor cast, April 2019 |
| Second lead | Ann Skelly as Penance Adair | Best friend and inventor |
| Supporting cast | Twelve actors added July 2019 | Williams, Norton, Riley, Torrens, O’Hare, Neil, Manson, Momoh, Tomlinson, Frost, Chaplin |
| Additional cast | Five added August 2019 | Berrington, Prettejohn, Devlin, Sawar, Smith |
| Recurring | Martyn Ford as Nicolas Perbal / Odium | Cast August 2019 |
A Schedule That Never Finished
The show’s run is short and its afterlife is strange. Here is the timeline as the record gives it.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| June 2018 | HBO orders The Nevers straight to series after a bidding war with networks and streaming services including Netflix |
| April 2019 | Laura Donnelly cast as Amalia True |
| July 2019 | Twelve actors added to the cast |
| August 2019 | Five actors added in main roles; Martyn Ford cast as Odium |
| April 11, 2021 | Series premieres on HBO |
| May 16, 2021 | First six-episode part concludes |
| December 2022 | Series canceled before the back six episodes could air |
| December 18, 2022 | Pulled from the HBO Max library |
| February 13, 2023 | All twelve episodes begin streaming on Tubi |
The Verdict on The Nevers
A 5.7 is not a dismissal. It is a measurement of a show that is better than its reputation and worse than its cast.
The comparison that matters is not to other Victorian fantasy. It is to what The Nevers was sold as. A straight-to-series order after a bidding war, with Whedon’s name on it and a Buffy writing bench behind it, promised a finished thing. What arrived was half a thing, and then a cancellation, and then a quiet reappearance on Tubi.
A review can only judge what aired, and what aired spends its six episodes setting up a payoff the audience was never given on the network that ordered it.
The parts that work are worth naming. Donnelly’s Amalia is a real creation — quick-fisted, guarded, funny when she allows herself to be. Skelly’s Penance gives her someone to talk to instead of someone to brood at. The Effie Boyle disguise is a genuine piece of craft, built with makeup, a fat suit, computer-generated imagery, and a fake IMDb credit, and it is the one moment where the show’s ambition and its execution line up.
The parts that don’t work are structural. With twelve series regulars, the cast is crowded. The enemies are numerous, and the fight never settles into a clear shape.
What this paper makes of it: The Nevers is a show with a great premise, a great lead, and a hole where its second half should be. The Tubi run lets you see all twelve episodes now, which is more than HBO Max allowed. That is worth something. It is not worth pretending the first six stand on their own.
Watch it for Donnelly. Watch it for the Effie trick. Do not watch it expecting a finished story. That part never got to air where it was supposed to.
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